I'm trying to give an old laptop (HP Pavilion tx 2000z) to my nephew before he leaves Canada to UK tomorrow(!), but the hardware wireless toggle button is broken. The button simply feels like it's missing a spring.

Ubuntu does not show any Wifi hardware (should be a Broadcom). Any tips to look into it, maybe from the command line? The Broadcom Ethernet does work.

I also installed Broadcom's proprietary driver: bcmwl-kernel-source without any effect.

1 Answer
1

rfkill list all shows that your wireless card is not shown. This is probably as a result of either switching off via the BIOS, or more likely, the broken physical switch is in the off position meaning no operating system will see the wireless device.

I'm afraid, no software will help you here - you'll need to find a way of by-passing the hardware switch, which may be as simple as:

checking if the wireless card with disabled in the BIOS

finding another "spring" and "button" off a third party computer spares, or even (more dramatically)

getting the soldering iron out and ensuring the wireless contact is made permanently on.

yeh you are correct - I alluded to it initially... but didnt give it as a suggestion. Have now changed. thanks.
–
fossfreedom♦Dec 31 '11 at 11:03

All right so BIOS has no options (at all!). I did something stupid, I glued it in position, thinking it was an on/off switch. Now I realize that moving the switch to the right was triggering the "on" and then a spring would move the button back to the left. Doing this again triggers the off state and again "on" and again "off"... In the process, one screw lost it's head. I need to reopen that machine but I have no more time. Thanks!
–
Louis PuzzlesDec 31 '11 at 18:56